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This thread is slowly showing us that one thing more dangerous than a mage is a mage who knows how physics work.

The lack of this actually being reflected in the setting leads me to believe that it's actually of minimal impact - probably because magic operates on symbolism, not physics - though they're not (always) mutually exclusive.

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Spells themselves has no regards for physics, but knowing physics can allow you to use spells in even more creative way.

Still, not sure if Matter can be used that way. I don't have the book on me right now, but I believe Matter has problems creating high energy matters. At least the four dot transformation spell explicitly can't transform into volatile matter.

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The lack of this actually being reflected in the setting leads me to believe that it's actually of minimal impact - probably because magic operates on symbolism, not physics - though they're not (always) mutually exclusive.

Well, it does explain why mages see each other as so dangerous. Law of symbolism wins at the end of the day, but law of physics helps us get there. (Until we get to Disciple-hood. Then physics tend to sit in the corner.)

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All in all, I'd say that certain Skills can supplement certain Arcana, but the Arcana can just as well compensate for lack of those Skills. No Computer dots? Just use Forces to force the computer to do what you want. Many Computer dots? Then you better know the extent of what you can do with computers when using Forces.
Which is one reason why people with high Mind are scary. On top of Mind being on of the ruling Arcana for the Devil Path, and able to both mind control you (through both soft and hard mind control) and erase your memories of being manipulated, it can also grant the mage massive amounts of Skill dots. Beyond what's humanly possible if they spend a Reach on going beyond Power Stat imposed limits.

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All in all, I'd say that certain Skills can supplement certain Arcana, but the Arcana can just as well compensate for lack of those Skills. No Computer dots? Just use Forces to force the computer to do what you want. Many Computer dots? Then you better know the extent of what you can do with computers when using Forces.
Which is one reason why people with high Mind are scary. On top of Mind being on of the ruling Arcana for the Devil Path, and able to both mind control you (through both soft and hard mind control) and erase your memories of being manipulated, it can also grant the mage massive amounts of Skill dots. Beyond what's humanly possible if they spend a Reach on going beyond Power Stat imposed limits.

Malkydel: "And the Machine dictated; let there be adequate illumination."
Yossarian: "And lo, it was optimal."

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The lack of this actually being reflected in the setting leads me to believe that it's actually of minimal impact - probably because magic operates on symbolism, not physics - though they're not (always) mutually exclusive.

It's minimal impact in the setting for the same reason the real implications of science and technology have minimal impact in fiction: the authors and game designers aren't scientists. The original version of Transmission had "radio waves", "bluetooth", and "wifi" as different things (all three are EM waves that fall under the "radio wave" band of the spectrum); several currently existing things in the book are just wrong from a physics standpoint, and it's clearly not an intentional thing to push the supremacy of symbolism, it's just that someone with a high school level physics education grabbed some garbled something off Wikipedia.

To be clear, this isn't a dig at anyone: Mage is a fantastically designed game and the people that worked on it are clearly good at what they do; but they're not scientists or engineers and it shows. And to read more into the inaccuracies than that they're inaccurate is silly.

Mentats - a 2e Free Council Obrimos Legacy (Mind/Forces) built around being a human computer; Thaumatech Engineers - a 2e Free Council Obrimos Legacy (Matter/Prime) focusing on the creation of Imbued items and the enhancement of Sleeper technology; Priests of the Watchful Eternity - a 2e Silver Ladder Moros Legacy (Life/Death) of Mages that enhance Mortals to fight strange entities

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It's minimal impact in the setting for the same reason the real implications of science and technology have minimal impact in fiction: the authors and game designers aren't scientists. The original version of Transmission had "radio waves", "bluetooth", and "wifi" as different things (all three are EM waves that fall under the "radio wave" band of the spectrum); several currently existing things in the book are just wrong from a physics standpoint, and it's clearly not an intentional thing to push the supremacy of symbolism, it's just that someone with a high school level physics education grabbed some garbled something off Wikipedia.

To be clear, this isn't a dig at anyone: Mage is a fantastically designed game and the people that worked on it are clearly good at what they do; but they're not scientists or engineers and it shows. And to read more into the inaccuracies than that they're inaccurate is silly.

Some things might be mistakes (such as mentioning different types of radio waves), but many others are intentional departures from physics because symbolism literally is how Supernal magic works.

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Seeing as it's right in the setting that Supernal laws supersede Fallen laws I consider it forgivable when they make scientific mistakes. I don't expect everyone to understand all the nuances of physics, I myself make mistakes and forget things rather frequently despite my Bachelor of Physics. That said I haven't found any unforgivable mistakes that I can recall, and mostly just little inconsistencies that can be easily ignored or dismissed under the premise of the first sentence of this paragraph.

I do agree though, the more you know about physics the more you can get really creative. I suspect someone with indepth knowledge of biology could do similar with Life magic.

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I'm still not sold on the idea of advanced scientific knowledge meaningfully impacting how creative you can get, or rather, I suspect that as that level of knowledge grows higher, you're going to be subject to diminishing returns. Having a solid fundamental understanding of how the Fallen World works is probably an advantage, an advanced degree in Physics is likely less so.

You might have the right understanding of Forces to know that it's reasonable to Compel a particle to behave in a certain way, and that if you did, it would cause a chain reaction that leads to a much more forceful effect, but at the end of the day, odds are good that that won't actually work, because the symbolic change you're enacting is aligned more with Patterning, for example, than Compelling.

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Nah. Spells doesn't care about indirect side effects. If Compelling is the right Practice for your effect, that's the Practice you're able to use. Patterning might be able to do the same thing, but without the painstaking efforts you underwent to set up the conditions that allows the Compelling spell to work.
For example: In order to gain dangerous amounts of radiation you probably need Forces 4 (Transform Energy should work even though the chart lacks radiation), but if you've somehow procured a piece of uranium close to but below critical mass and know your physics, then you'd be able to cast a Shielding spell on the uranium to prevent free neutrons from escaping it, thereby decreasing the threshold for critical mass and setting off a nuclear explosion.

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If Compelling is the right Practice for your effect, that's the Practice you're able to use.

To better summarize my above post: I agree with this.

I disagree that Shielding is the right practice for your effect in your example, because I the effect, as I read it, is to set off a nuclear explosion. Everything else is 'how' the magic achieves it, which the guidance in the book tells us to disregard.

First and foremost, decide exactly what you’re trying to accomplish with your spell. Don’t focus on how the magic will do what you want for now, just focus on what you want it to do.

Advanced scientific knowledge does a great job of explaining a lot of different 'how's, but that's of minimal usefulness to my reading.

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I disagree that Shielding is the right practice for your effect in your example, because I the effect, as I read it, is to set off a nuclear explosion. Everything else is 'how' the magic achieves it, which the guidance in the book tells us to disregard.

Advanced scientific knowledge does a great job of explaining a lot of different 'how's, but that's of minimal usefulness to my reading.

I want my spell to Shield the Protons and Neutrons in the atoms that make up this hunk of iron from the strong interaction.

I know that the side effect of this is a giant explosion, but the explosion itself is not part of the Imago.

Mentats - a 2e Free Council Obrimos Legacy (Mind/Forces) built around being a human computer; Thaumatech Engineers - a 2e Free Council Obrimos Legacy (Matter/Prime) focusing on the creation of Imbued items and the enhancement of Sleeper technology; Priests of the Watchful Eternity - a 2e Silver Ladder Moros Legacy (Life/Death) of Mages that enhance Mortals to fight strange entities

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I want my spell to Shield the Protons and Neutrons in the atoms that make up this hunk of iron from the strong interaction.

I know that the side effect of this is a giant explosion, but the explosion itself is not part of the Imago.

Yeah, I mean...I can't see that as being anything other than disingenuous.
Everyone at the table knows what you're actually trying to do.

Thankfully, the people I play with are like-minded, we all find that this reading makes sense, and it's held up pretty well over the several hundred hours of Mage 2E we have going so far. If allowing technicalities like that works for you without looking too closely at the implications for the setting, more power to you.